Electron and Proton Transfer in Nitric Oxide Reductase NO Binding, NO Reduction and no Pumping

Sammanfattning: Nitric oxide reductase (NOR) from Paracoccus denitrificans catalyzes the two electronreduction of NO to N2O (2NO + 2H+ + 2e- ? N2O + H2O) as part of the process ofdenitrification, the step-wise reduction of nitrate to dinitogen. The NOR-catalyzedreaction is central in the nitrogen cycle, since in this step the N=N double bond isformed. NOR is a deviant heme copper oxidase, located in the cytoplasmic membrane,containing four redox active cofactors. Like cytochrome c oxidase (CcO), NOR canreduce oxygen to water as a side reaction, but in contrast to CcO it does not contributeto the proton motive force that drives the conversion of ADP to ATP by ATP synthase.The active site in the catalytic subunit NorB consists of a non-heme iron FeB and a hemeb3 that are anti-ferromagnetically coupled. Additionally a low-spin heme b in NorB isinvolved in accepting electrons from heme c of NorC, a membrane anchored cytochromec, which is the second subunit of the purified NorBC heterodimer.We have studied the terminal region of the proton entry channel and possible ligands tothe binuclear active site of NOR using the flow-flash technique and could demonstratethat the putative proton channel residues Glu(E)198 and E267 in NorB are essential forproton uptake. We propose that they define the terminal proton channel region close tothe binuclear site. An alanine variant of the fully conserved amino acid residue E202 ofNOR that, according to the model of NOR (47), is located in the vicinity to the active site,is neither essential for catalytic activity nor integrity of the active site.Furthermore, we were able to demonstrate the [NO] dependency of NOR in the reactionbetween fully reduced protein and NO using the flow-flash technique (21, 24). Thebinding of NO to the fully reduced enzyme is clearly concentration dependent,inconsistent with a previously proposed obligatory binding of NO first to FeB before itligates to heme b3, where it, in the first turnover, is reduced by the electrons from theactive site. Further oxidation involves electron transfer from the low-spin hemes, which isaccelerated at lower [NO]. This acceleration at lower substrate concentration is evenlarger at decreased pH. We could demonstrate that substrate inhibition, observed insteady-state measurements, occurs already on oxidizing the fully reduced enzyme,indicating that NO binds to its inhibitory site before electrons can redistribute to theactive site from the low-spin hemes.